


Picture Perfect

by Nomanono



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: College, Friends to Lovers, Haha we're totally just sharing this bed to stay warm, Insomnia, Late Nights, M/M, Rare Pairings, Totally, Zine: Rare Pairs on Ice, rarepairsonice, roomies to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-29 22:17:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17211857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nomanono/pseuds/Nomanono
Summary: Leo has a way of making Colorado Springs sound perfect. When he finally convinces Phichit to make the move, reality is far different.And better.





	Picture Perfect

**Author's Note:**

> You know how much I adore exploring niche pairings. I had a total blast writing for the Rare Pairs on Ice zine!

Before coming to the states, most of Phichit’s US knowledge was gleaned secondhand from the National Team’s Instagram and Twitter feeds. The rink in Colorado Springs? World class. The surrounding mountains? Perfect selfie backdrop. And the people themselves?

Leo de la Iglesia was the same year as Phichit, six months younger, and posted almost as many pictures.  He always looked half-asleep, even at his happiest, possibly because he responded to posts at all hours, even the dead of night.

 _isn’t it like 3 there_ , Phichit asked one afternoon. Leo had commented on his triple toe video a mere thirty seconds after posting.

_Closer to 4 haha!_

Phichit wasn’t sure if he was helping or hurting Leo’s insomnia when they switched from mentions to DMs. It started benignly: tips for jumps, compliments on selfies, skating backgrounds. But over the course of a month their conversations grew into hours-long exchanges: past loves, secret dreams, life stories. Leo was the first kid in his family to go to college, and only because of a skating scholarship. He’d gone to Colorado Springs last year to start classes and train. Unfortunately, he was managing both on three-to-four hours of sleep a day and the occasional blackout twenty-hour catch-up on the weekend.

 _no wonder you’re tired all the time!_ Phichit pressed.

_You get used to it._

Phichit, on the other hand, was struggling to find a coach that could challenge him. Ice sports weren’t exactly established in Thailand, and neither Bangkok nor Chiang Mai had attracted a coach that could train Phichit to International levels.

 _Come to the states!_ Leo texted. 

It started as a tease. Can’t find a coach? Come to the states. Sweltering temperatures? Come to the states.

Lonely?

_i can’t believe you can just go get coffee with Kate Krasinski and Mark Cho. ;-; ;-; ;-;_  
_there aren’t any other skaters here ;-; ;-; ;-;_

_Phichit._  
_I mean it._  
_Come to the states._

Leo posted pictures to persuade him: Pikes Peak, bowling outings with his rinkmates, and the shitty apartment—by his own words—he’d rented near campus.

 _Come on P!_ Leo texted, accompanied by a ragged futon in the hallway that passed for Leo’s living room. You can stay with me while you look for a place.

_how will we talk then? you’ll be asleep!_

_Hah! If only._

Phichit sat on his bed, feet tucked up underneath him, staring at the bouncing dots of Leo’s typing.

 _Please?_ Leo texted.

Three months later, Phichit had a passport, a student visa, and a plane ticket. He’d seen so many pictures from Leo’s feed that Denver almost felt familiar when he landed, but there were certain things no photo prepared him for.

Take Leo’s laugh, for example. Until Phichit walked out of customs and complained about his snack getting confiscated, he’d never heard Leo’s laugh, just imagined it with every texted hah or heheh. He’d never seen the way it made Leo’s eyes squint even deeper beneath his brow, or felt it make Phichit’s own laugh erupt the next moment.

“Welcome home, P,” Leo grinned, and with his arm swung around Phichit’s shoulder, they headed to the city.

Photos also failed to prepare Phichit for the altitude.

“Why can’t I breathe?” Phichit asked as they trekked up the winding path towards the rink that afternoon, flanked by scraggly pines and cedar trees. There was no horizon, no ocean, just the jaggy blue shadows of distant mountains.

“We’re six thousand feet above sea level,” Leo laughed.

“What is that, in kilometers,” Phichit asked, huffing between phrases.

Leo had no idea. He pulled out his phone. “Hey Siri, what’s six thousand feet in kilometers?”

“1.828 kilometers.”

“Cheī̀y xéy,” Phichit groaned. “I’m going to die.”

Photos didn’t capture just how cruddy Leo’s futon was, either. They didn’t convey the creaking whine as Phichit opened it or the uneven cylinders of pressure that poked into his back when he laid down. Pictures didn’t include the crunch of cheap, chunky stuffing shifting under Phichit’s weight or the constant _eee-err_ of rusty springs.

“You almost look like me,” Leo laughed as Phichit walked bleary-eyed out of the bathroom the next morning.

He kept the futon folded after that.

—

Before Phichit arrived, Leo had promised to help him look for his own apartment, but the initial urgency petered off after a week or two, and before long neither of them mentioned it.

“What’s this?” Leo asked one morning, looking at a stack of crisp twenty-dollar bills.

“Rent,” Phichit replied.

—

As far as Phichit could tell, Leo slept from roughly 5-to-9 on a good morning. Sometimes, when he woke up in the middle of the night, Phichit could hear the white noise of Leo watching streams or youtube videos or going through Harrison Ford’s entire discography for the twentieth time.

 _what’s this one?_ Phichit texted from the couch. It was almost like old times, only the bed was way worse.

 _The Fugitive_ , Leo responded.

_!!!_

_Want to come watch?_

Leo had a full-size bed and a nightstand at the perfect height for a laptop-turned-TV. Phichit hopped onto the bed next to him and sat cross-legged to watch, leaning over Leo’s prone form until Leo looked back at him with a smirk. “You can lay down, you know.”

So Phichit tucked down next to Leo, careful to leave a margin of air between them. As much as Phichit loved the film, Leo conked out within five minutes, and given this was the first actual bed Phichit had slept in in weeks, he wasn’t far behind.

—

The week before their first exams, Phichit learned what Leo was like under stress. Needless to say, pictures like that didn’t wind up in Leo’s “Come to the States” brochure.

In place of his laughter, Leo got quiet and focused, spending more time at the rink with his earbuds in and steadfastly sitting at the kitchen counter to study late into the night. Talking to him was fruitless. Joking with him was fruitless. But then Phichit found his secret weakness.

 _omg its SO cute look_ , Phichit texted him a gif of a giant fluffy white dog playing with a kitten.

 _Ahhhhhhh! I want a dog so bad!_ Leo texted back from like ten feet away.

_you should get one!_

_Renting near campus is brutal. You can only have, like, fish or hamsters._

_….hamsters o.o_

—

His name was Pips. His belly was white, his back dusty gray, and his eyes looked like little black beads.

“You have to be in the photo, too! You’re Hamster Dad #2,” Phichit declared. Leo feigned a fight but eventually wound up next to Phichit, their cheeks so close to touching he could feel the static charge.  

“Alright, now my turn,” Leo said. He put Pips back in his tank and then he and Leo both looked through the glass, eyes only, for his pic.

They both immediately liked the other’s photo, but Phichit stalled as he saw the tags on Leo’s: _#hamsterdads #pipslife #bff_

—

They went to the zoo after exams to celebrate, and Phichit posted a half-dozen photos of them posing with animal statues, feeding rainbow lories, and sticking out their Dippin’-Dots-covered tongues.

_#bff_

He’d never had a bff before.

—

The greatest betrayal of Leo’s photographic wooing wasn’t the altitude, or the apartment, or even the reality that Kate Krasinski was usually far too busy to hang out or get coffee. It was the temperature. In Thailand, ‘Cold front’ meant ‘maybe we’ll dip below 20 C’. Here, Phichit tugged down on the weather app, continuously refreshing because -18 C couldn’t possibly be an actual temperature that actual humans actually endured.

“Come on,” Leo said, tugging near-frozen Phichit out of the apartment and towards the bus stop. “We have to buy you a coat.”

“I look like a marshmallow,” Phichit balked in front of the mirror.

“Nah. You look like Pips,” Leo laughed, planting earmuffs on Phichit, then a thick wool hat, and an equally dense scarf.

“Great,” came Phichit’s wool-muffled voice. “Now I’m a sweaty marshmallow.”

—

That night, despite two blankets, Phichit shivered himself awake on the couch. He swore he could see his breath puff out. He looked to his hamster for sympathy, but Pips was asleep in his food ramekin, oblivious. Phichit tried several different techniques to keep himself warm, and then, sometime after he’d wrapped his feet in his new scarf, he heard the whispers of a show coming from Leo’s room.

“Leo?” Phichit asked. He stood in the doorway, dragging a cloak of blankets in his wake, bundled into them like a burka. Even just standing at the threshold it was already warmer.

“Hey,” Leo said, sitting up in bed. Somehow, he was wearing only a tank top and a single blanket over his sheet. His eyes had that half-glazed late-night look to them, but his smile was no less bright. “Can’t sleep?”

“It’s freezing,” Phichit pouted.

Leo pulled back the covers, patting the blue-striped sheets. “Come on.”

Phichit only shed his blankets when he was thoroughly ensconced under Leo’s. It was so warm that Phichit nearly fainted with relief. As he twisted onto his back his elbow brushed Leo’s side, evoking a sharp yelp.

“You’re freezing!”

“I told you!”

Before Phichit knew what was happening, Leo was chafing along his arms, cultivating a rosy streak of friction. Satisfied, Leo’s arms came closer, hugging Phichit no differently than they had in their Instagram photos, only entirely differently for the context of night, and bed, and near-nudity.

“Warmer?” Leo asked, and Phichit didn’t know what to say, because if he said yes, would that make Leo pull away? He steeled himself to bravery.

Phichit put his arm over Leo’s and even snuggled back towards his heat, until he could feel the curve of Leo’s chest and stomach against his spine. “Better than out there,” Phichit answered. His legs rested in front of Leo’s, but fulfilling his moment of bravery meant tangling them together, even if his icicle-like feet made Leo shiver.  “Sorry you’re still up.”

“Me? I’m normally up for another two hours. You’re the one who needs his beauty sleep, Mister Marshmallow,” Leo laughed, only this time it was accompanied by a squeeze of his arms around Phichit’s waist.

“Hey!” Phichit scoffed. He elbowed Leo, only to feel Leo’s forehead press against the back of his head. His heart leapt in his chest, racing to every corner of his ribs. It was quiet after that, blue computer light at their backs, Han Solo’s bad boy heroisms occasionally loud enough to parse. They settled into each other’s heat until it was almost too warm, defrosting Phichit’s bones.

Leo said he would be up for hours yet, but after barely ten minutes Phichit heard the quiet, even breathing of sleep.

—

“I slept for _six hours_ ,” Leo said in disbelief. 

“Well I didn’t freeze to death,” Phichit countered, rolling over to look at Leo. He squinted against the blaring triangle of sunlight under Leo’s lopsided blinds. It was easier just to tug the comforter up over both their heads.

“Hey!”

“What?!” Phichit grinned. Leo nudged him, Phichit nudged back, and they both wound up laughing and squirming until Phichit flopped lazily across Leo’s chest. 

“Selfie?” he asked. 

“I never turn down a selfie.”

Phichit held his phone out, catching their ruffled hair and the outdated band t-shirts they’d picked up at Goodwill, all bathed blue from the sheets. 

_bff is my heater, i’m his sleeping pill_ Phichit captioned.

“Whoa, typo,” Leo said.

“Huh?” Phichit asked, but he let Leo tug the phone away, watching in curiosity as he thumbed to the bff and erased one of the f’s.

“There,” Leo said. “Fixed.” After a breathless pause, during which Phichit’s heart surely won Olympic gold in gymnastics, Leo blushed: “Well, what do you think?”

No photo would ever capture what Phichit felt at that moment, but he leaned over, pressed a kiss to Leo’s pink cheek, and posted it anyway.


End file.
